[Zepps_News] #US hurricane chief: worst is yet to come

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Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:09:58 -0700

[Zepps_News] #US hurricane chief: " worst is yet to come "

 

 

 

 

 

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Worst is yet to come, US hurricane chief says

Tue Aug 22, 2006 8:00 AM ET

 

By Jim Loney

 

MIAMI, Aug 22 (Reuters) - If you thought the sight of the great American

jazz city New Orleans flooded to the eaves -- its people trapped in

attics or cowering on rooftops -- was the nightmare hurricane scenario,

think again.

 

Max Mayfield, director of the U.S. National Hurricane Center, says

there's plenty of potential for a storm worse than Hurricane Katrina

which killed 1,339 people along the U.S. Gulf coast and caused some $80

billion in damage last August.

 

" People think we have seen the worst. We haven't, " Mayfield told Reuters

in an interview at the fortress-like hurricane center in Florida.

 

" I think the day is coming. I think eventually we're going to have a

very powerful hurricane in a major metropolitan area worse than what we

saw in Katrina and it's going to be a mega-disaster. With lots of lost

lives, " Mayfield said.

 

" I don't know whether that's going to be this year or five years from

now or a hundred years from now. But as long as we continue to develop

the coastline like we are, we're setting up for disaster. "

 

Looking back nearly a year to the costliest natural disaster in U.S.

history, and the third-worst hurricane in terms of American lives lost,

Mayfield said Katrina itself could have been a greater disaster.

 

By Friday night, more than two days before the storm struck the Gulf

coast on Aug. 29, the hurricane center had predicted its future track

accurately and also warned it could become a powerful Category 4 storm

on the five-step Saffir Simpson scale of hurricane intensity.

 

New Orleans was squarely in the danger zone, and emergency managers and

residents had plenty of time to prepare.

 

" One of my greatest fears is having people go to bed at night prepared

for a Category 1 and waking up to a Katrina or Andrew. One of these

days, that's going to happen, " Mayfield said.

 

Katrina went just to the east of New Orleans, sparing the city the worst

of a massive storm surge and the strongest winds. But still the city's

protective levees failed.

 

VULNERABLE CITIES

 

The worst-case hurricane scenario? Mayfield has many in mind. A stronger

hurricane closer to New Orleans. A direct hit on the vulnerable

Galveston-Houston area, the fragile Florida Keys or heavily populated

Miami-Fort Lauderdale.

 

Or how about a major hurricane racing up the east coast to the New

York-New Jersey area, with its millions of people and billions of

dollars of pricey real estate?

 

" One of the highest storm surges possible anywhere in the country is

where Long Island juts out at nearly right angles to the New Jersey

coast. They could get 25 to 30 feet (7.6 to 9.1 metres) of storm surge

.... even going up the Hudson River, " Mayfield said.

 

" The subways are going to flood. Some people might think 'Hey, I'll go

into the subways and I'll be safe.' No, they are going to flood. "

 

Mayfield, a silver-haired, 34-year veteran of the hurricane center who

became its public face in 2000, is a tireless campaigner for hurricane

preparation, warning the 50 million people who live in U.S. coastal

counties from Maine to Texas that they are all in the path of a future

storm.

 

He is mystified by a study that found 60 percent of people in

hurricane-prone U.S. coastal areas have no hurricane plan -- which to

disaster managers means up to a week's worth of food and water

squirreled away, a kit with flashlights and other gear and an

established evacuation route to higher ground.

 

" After Katrina and after the last two hurricane seasons you can't

understand why more people are not taking hurricanes seriously, "

Mayfield said.

 

Katrina, he says, killed people who stayed in their homes with

confidence because they had lived through 1969's Hurricane Camille.

Camille was a much stronger storm than Katrina when it crashed ashore in

Louisiana and Mississippi as one of only three Category 5s to hit the

United States in recorded history.

 

" There were a lot of people who lost their lives because they thought

that they had already lived through the worst they could possibly live

through, " Mayfield said.

 

" Experience isn't always a good teacher. "

 

--

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking

about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order.

Nothing has

changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists,

we're

talking about getting a court order before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

 

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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